The Old Smoker's Trick (or: Faking Wisdom)

There is an old smoker's trick. If you don't fully purse your lips around the cigarette, you allow more oxygen in with the smoke. It cools the hit. It makes you look like a pro.

Smoking cigarettes isn't my vice of choice. But I know the trick.

And if I told you the trick with enough confidence, you would assume I was a smoker. You would assume I had the "experience".

This haunts me.

I worry that my entire intellectual life is just the Old Smoker's Trick. I read the books. I learn the jargon (rhizome, simulacra, dialectics). I purse my lips the right way.

But do I know it? Or have I just memorized the map without walking the terrain?

I wrote asking myself: "Is the difference between having had and not having had an experience only the story?"

If I can describe the feeling of a first kiss perfectly (the sensory details, the hesitation), does it matter if I imagined it? If I can describe the pain of loss so well that you cry, does it matter if I'm just borrowing the pain from a movie?

We are all just collecting stories. Some are ours. Some we steal.

I feel like an imposter constantly. I feel like I'm wearing a costume that's slightly too big. A "Seeker of Truth", "Writer", "Philosopher".

But maybe that's how it works. You fake the inhalation until the nicotine actually hits your bloodstream. You play the role until the mask fuses to your face.

I am essentially tricking people into thinking I am wise. But in the process of tricking them, I have to learn the lines. And maybe, eventually, the lines become true.

Just don't look too closely at how I'm holding the cigarette.